The Quaker Studies Research Association invites proposals for papers for its 2027 annual conference, to be held on 26th June 2027 at Friargate Meeting House (York, England) on the theme:
Quakers, Authority, and Power
From their beginnings in the seventeenth century, Friends have lived in a creative tension with authority and power. Early Quakers challenged established religious, social, and political authorities while simultaneously developing distinctive forms of spiritual authority within their own communities. They rejected coercion and hierarchy, yet created enduring structures of eldership, discipline, discernment, and communal accountability. They questioned inherited authority whilst seeking to remain faithful to the authority of Truth as inwardly revealed and corporately discerned.
These questions remain highly relevant today. At a time when many Quaker communities are reflecting on the role of discipline, discernment, ministry, membership, governance, and witness, the relationship between authority and power remains central to understanding both the Quaker past and the Quaker present.
This conference seeks to explore the many ways in which authority and power have been understood, exercised, challenged, resisted, and transformed within Quaker traditions around the world.
We welcome contributions from historians, theologians, sociologists, political theorists, scholars of religion, and practitioners. Interdisciplinary approaches are especially encouraged.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Historical Perspectives: George Fox and charismatic authority; Authority among early Friends; Quakers and state power; Quaker relations with political institutions; Discipline, oversight, and eldership; Authority and schism in Quaker history; Gender, race, and authority among Friends; Quaker influence on reform movements
Theological and Ecclesiological Perspectives: The authority of the Inward Light; Continuing revelation and communal discernment; Scripture and authority in Quaker traditions; The authority of meetings for worship and business; Ministry, eldership, and spiritual gifts; Discernment, unity, and disagreement; Authority in liberal, evangelical, Conservative, and pastoral Quaker traditions; The theology of discipline
Power, Community, and Society: Quakers and political power; Peace testimony and state authority; Quaker organisations and institutional power; Authority and expertise; Authority in activist movements; Quaker approaches to leadership; Digital communities and changing patterns of authority; Power, privilege, and inclusion among Friends
Contemporary and Comparative Perspectives: Authority and legitimacy in contemporary Quakerism; Revising disciplines and books of faith and practice; Quakers and wider debates about authority in religion; Comparative studies with other Christian traditions; Quaker perspectives on authority in pluralist societies; The future of authority in Quaker communities
The conference particularly welcomes papers that engage critically with the distinction between authority, power, influence, leadership, legitimacy, and coercion, and that explore how Quaker traditions have negotiated these concepts across different historical and cultural settings.
Proposals should be sent to qsraofficers[at]gmail.com to be received by Monday 11th January 2027 and should include:
Title of paper
Abstract (250–300 words)
Brief biographical note (100 words)
We look forward to welcoming contributions that deepen our understanding of one of the most enduring and challenging questions in Quaker history and thought: how do communities grounded in the freedom of the Spirit recognise, sustain, and exercise authority without domination, and power without coercion?
“If we ever hope to reduce, significantly, the nature of true violence, we must have a better understanding of what violence actually is and examine the structural roots of the violence that is all around us.”
In recognition of World Quaker Day, we invite you to reflect on the following queries and share your thoughts with us at theblackquakerproject@gmail.com.
How do you react to the BlackQuaker Project’s strong feeling that there can be no peace without justice?
What forms of threats to peace exist within your community?
Why should we focus on STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE–not just direct, visible violence–in understanding and attempting to resolve today’s domestic and international tensions?
We wish a Happy Independence Day to the citizens of Nigeria and China and we hope you enjoy the forthcoming World Quaker Day celebrations.
Peace and Blessings, The BlackQuaker Project Wellesley Friends Meeting, New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) www.theblackquakerproject.org 1 October 2026
New Hal Weaver Biography by Emma Lapsansky-Werner with Penetrating QCIA Interview by Rob Cox
Introduction:
The late UMass Amherst Special-Collections Director in the Du Bois Library, Robert S. Cox, interviewed Harold D. Weaver Jr. in a revealing, 82-minute dialogue. Guided by Cox’s contemplation of “what is Hal doing for Friends now?,” this interview spotlights Dr. Weaver’s involvement in developments of Quakerism worldwide, especially in relationship to the global Quaker-majority in Kenya and the growing membership across Latin America and other parts of Africa.
Today we share excerpts of this new transcript, which offers a glimpse into a thoughtful discussion of Hal’s life and spiritual journey, soon to be intimately documented in a full-life biography crafted by historian Emma Lapsansky-Werner: Child of Georgia, Citizen of the World: Snapshots in the Life of Harold D. Weaver, Jr. Picking up where the 2019 interview left off, Lapsansky-Werner offers a larger portrait of what Rob Cox hinted at in his probing exploration of Weaver’s life-journey.
Her forthcoming biography begins the narrative with Weaver’s birth–in Depression-era Georgia–into a family of dedicated educators, who modeled for their son a goal of helping to bring about what Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned as a sweeping human rights movement. Over the course of his nine-decade life, Dr. Hal Weaver has followed his father’s model of helping teachers to develop enlightening and inspiring fare for their students. Hal has also brought his own considerable leadership skills to the pursuit of that human justice and truth. The upcoming book–which chronicles Hal’s long involvement with Friends and with other seekers of Justice and Truth worldwide–reflects his experiences on five continents, with dozens of cultures and four languages. (Hal notes, with humor, that he also “studied–but did not learn–Chinese.”)
Excerpts from “Harold D. Weaver: Oral History with Robert S. Cox, August 26, 2019.”
Excerpt No. 1: “Becoming A Conscientious Objector”
Rob: When do you begin to consider yourself a Quaker? It’s not at Haverford, is it?
Hal: No, I really didn’t consider myself to be a Quaker while I was at Westtown or Haverford. As an adult, the first major impact that my Quaker education had on me was to lead me–a draftee in the U.S. Army–to apply for conscientious objector status. After willingly undergoing Basic Training and Advanced Infantry Training at Camp Benning in Columbus, GA, I was assigned to teach others to kill. That is where I drew the line.
Martin Luther King’s non-violent human rights movement had a tremendous impact on my feelings and thinking–both his writings and actions, as well as the influence of Gandhi on his life. This helped convince me to think about the world through the eyes of Gandhi, to whom I had been introduced at Haverford but whose teachings I did internalize until I was in the military. As I grew into my own understanding of conscientious objection, I was surprised to find an empathetic company commander, Captain Johnny Johnson, who supported me in this. Even though he had been a professional military person all of his adult life. But he said he had met people before who were conscientious objectors and had come to respect them. So this was part of my reckoning with the fact that you can’t tell a person by the uniform. In fact, you can’t tell much about a person’s feelings or their thoughts by their skin color or any other thing. So Johnny Johnson supported me, but later, I ended up with another company commander who was bitter about his battlefield commission being removed, with his rank being reduced. And I seemed to be the one upon which his frustration landed: he set me up for court martial. I had stood at attention, as I knew I should, during the playing of the national anthem, but I did not salute because I was not in uniform and did not feel I was supposed to salute if I was not in uniform. So I was brought before a court martial, found guilty; but the case was eventually thrown out after two veteran sergeants testified that they would have done the same. After a trip to Washington to meet with the Adjutant General of the US Army, I was released from the military with a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions as being “unable to adjust.”
A major life-long skill from this experience: dealing effectively with challenging governmental bureaucracies, including future ones in France, the USSR, and China.
Excerpt No. 2: “Encounters with Bayard Rustin: Selected Convergence and Divergence.”
Rob: In New York in 1958 you had this job with the New York City Youth Board on the streets of New York and then you had this gig with Bayard the same year?
Hal: Right. I had arrived back in New York City in the spring of ’58. In fall ’58, Bayard was organizing the Youth March for Integrated Schools for April 1959. And I became a part of the organizing, the volunteering, which I remember mostly involved sending out letters, and contacting people to publicize the campaign. But it was an opportunity of meeting Bayard again. I am convinced that Bayard would not have been as successful in the mammoth 1963 March on Washington if he had not had the dry run organizing the smaller marches in DC in 1958 and 1959.
And, then, in 1964, our convergence continued when I took a job with the anti-poverty program, HARYOU (Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited). Bayard came by my office on several occasions, and we had a chance to talk about organizing young people, politicizing young people, and getting them involved in political and economic development in Black communities.
Divergence occurred on the issue of education in Black communities around the country. Bayard supported the United Federation of Teachers’ against Black-community control in New York City while I was strongly in favor of community control. As a matter of fact, I later organized at Cornell University in summer 1969 a U.S. Office of Education-financed Institute, which brought together educators specifically from cities that were trying to organize their own community-control systems. So, we trained teams of teachers, administrators, and School Board members from Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Harlem, Bedford Stuy, DC, and Durham, North Carolina. So Bayard and I were divergent at that point. This was the late ’60s and early ’70s, but my view of him, and of his life’s work, changed again after his death in 1987 when the documentary film, Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, came out in January 2003. We hosted numerous screenings and discussions, including one at our home Meeting, Wellesley, before its release on national TV, PBS. And, finally, my advocacy for Bayard continued when I–as a Board member–initiated the action that led the AFSC Board in 2010 to restore his name to its rightful place as a major co-author of the impactful AFSC pamphlet, Speak Truth to Power.
Note: The two excerpts above have been edited for brevity and clarity for this e-newsletter. They will be fully restored for Dr. Lapsansky-Werner’s forthcoming biography of Weaver. The BQP is grateful for Cooper’s and Emma’s assistance in the preparation of this e-newsletter.
Conclusion:
In her upcoming book, Child of Georgia, Citizen of the World: Snapshots in the Life of Harold D. Weaver, Jr., Emma Lapsansky-Werner picks up where Cox’s interview left off, asking the question: “What can we learn from a man who internalized social justice in early childhood, and proceeded to take that message into the world across nine decades and five continents?
To listen to the full dialogue between Dr. Cox and Dr. Weaver, please visit the UMass Amherst installation of our Quakers of Color International Archive (QCIA) online here. We also encourage you to visit our QCIA’s new home at Haverford College Library’s Quaker and Special Collection to discover our latest interviews with Friends of Color around the world.
Who and what have influenced your spiritual journey?
Why do you feel so few African Americans have joined the Religious Society of Friends? And how do you feel we should address this?
Peace and Blessings, The BlackQuaker Project Wellesley Friends Meeting, New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) www.theblackquakerproject.org 17 September 2026
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Friends Association for Higher Education held its annual conference from June 2-8, 2026, at William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Since 1981, FAHE has been lending support and encouragement to Quakers at Friends colleges and universities as well as those at non-Quaker institutions. Among our various purposes, our organization helps to clarify and articulate the distinctively Quaker vision of higher education, in terms of both curriculum and teaching. We assist the Quaker colleges and universities in affirming their Quaker identity. We invite Friends to join us.
This year, the conference theme was “A Quaker Pedagogy.” There were fifteen presentations in addition to the three plenary speakers responding to such queries as: what makes Quaker education unique, how being at a Quaker institution shapes instruction, and what the lived testimony that underlies our pedagogy offers the wider world of Quaker education.
Each morning we worshipped together; on Tuesday, Mimi Holland led us in semi-programmed worship where we joined our sacred harps together in hymns. On Wednesday, Randall Nichols led us in unprogrammed worship at Coal Creek Meeting House, a short distance from the University, where his great grandparents were married and where his great grandmother’s wedding dress hangs. And on Thursday, Jacci Stuckey shepherded us as we worshipped in the unlit underground while violent weather passed above us.
Monday, the first evening of the conference, we heard a plenary talk by Philip Clayton, “What We Teach and How We Teach it: Pedagogy and the Quaker Way of Being in the World.” Philip guided us in exploring different commitments that inspire Quaker pedagogy: being fully present and focused on what is happening right now and then doing something redemptive; entering the classroom or learning space as a full person listening for small leadings from God; following a Jesuanic pedagogy; balancing acquired knowledge and experienced knowledge; creating a classroom that is a community after the manner of Friends; and committing ourselves to our interconnectedness, the sacredness of the Other, and authenticity. We also examined how Quaker pedagogy sometimes parallels the Buddhist mindset.
Tuesday invited us into further discovery. In her presentation, “Implementing the Commonplace Book in the Modern Quaker Classroom,” Amy Andreassen (re)introduced us to the practice of the Commonplace Book–a book we curate and gather and edit as we read (and experience life) “pen in hand.” Paul Anderson then presented on “D. Elton Trueblood, the Order of Common Life, and Spiritual Renewal.” Paul wove concepts from Trueblood’s four programmatic books into memories and anecdotes of their time together.
Tuesday was also the second plenary session. Via Zoom, from his home in Kaimosi, Kenya, Robert Wafula presented “A Quaker Pedagogy from the African Perspective.” Robert spoke about how education is a communal endeavor–no one is educated for themself–and how identity develops with others. He also spoke about the theology of imago Dei and the Kenyan Quaker intertwining of the SPICES with African Indigenous wisdom. Lastly, Robert led us through an exploration of specific ways that each of the SPICES is reflected in the pedagogy of Friends Theological College in Kenya, again underscoring that they are often woven together with African systems.
After this Lisa Payne Ossian spoke about Herbert Hoover’s work for famine relief and his ideas about humanitarian obligations to Germany post World War Two, in her presentation, “The Hoover Plan: A Moral and Spiritual Reconstruction, 1947.” Michelle Rhea then presented, “Problem-Based Learning as Quaker Pedagogy: Clinical Reasoning, Communal Discernment, and Whole-Person Formation in Physician Assistant Education.” This is a pedagogy that, comparable to a Quaker Clearness Committee, starts with a problem/dilemma, and is based in quietness where answers are not given. What is taught rather is a process that leads to answer finding.
Tuesday afternoon we heard a presentation called, “Teaching as Testimony: Preparing Educators Through Christ-Centered Quaker and Mennonite Values” from Dana Oswald. Dana used the SPICES to illustrate how utilizing Mennonite and Quaker values can improve teaching practices. After that Wilton Wright and Destiny Kiddoo presented “Co-Teaching as Quaker Pedagogy,” using their experience of co-teaching as a way of modeling community values, collaboration, multiple perspectives, and trust in the person you are teaching with.
Tuesday evening Middle River Friends Church hosted us for a potluck near Carlisle, Iowa and we had the opportunity to tour the Norman E. Borlaug Hall of Laureates at the World Food Prize Center in Des Moines.
We began Wednesday at Coal Creek Meeting House at Nelson Pioneer Farm, with a presentation from Neil Cantrall, “How Silent Worship Shapes the Practice of Educators.” Neil spoke of how including a period of silent (waiting/expectant) worship creates the opportunity for preparation–spiritual and otherwise–for listening, receptivity, and learning. After that, Amy Andreassen presented, “The Hidden Teacher: Reclaiming the Sacred Rhythm of Rest,” where she discussed seven pitfalls that lead to “Hurry Sickness” and seven practices to combat it.
After we returned to the William Penn campus nine presidents of Quaker colleges joined us online to discuss the state of Quaker Higher education at their respective institutions.
Jacci Stuckey presented, “Quaker Pedagogy at a Holiness Friends University,” examining the question of how we might continue to look back into history to help move us forward holding onto our Quaker and Christian values. George King then presented, “Discovering a Quaker Pedagogy of Attunement: Reflections from an Ecological Outsider”–insights and observations he’s made about Quaker pedagogy as an outsider. He spoke about a communal attunement and a stewardship of attention. He noticed that Quakerism encourages us to listen first and teach second.
Wednesday afternoon we heard a presentation, “Centering the Human: Quaker Pedagogy in the Onslaught of AI” from Don Smith. This presentation helped us understand both the opportunities machine learning provides as well as the dangers of threats it poses. Machine learning (or AI) can reduce repetitive tasks, but it also has the potential to become a giant plagiarism machine and an ethical nightmare. Don reminded us that AI is not a truth machine but a probability machine. After that Mike Heller, in his presentation, “To ‘Be Teachable,’ Mentors and Quaker Faith,” encouraged us to be “teachable” drawing from John Woolman’s journal. Mike noted the ways in which his own mentors were generous with their time with him and we spent time thinking about our own mentors and how Quakerism can inform how we can be teachable and effective mentors.
In Charlotte Stangeland and Dana Oswald’s presentation, “A Quaker Vision: Peace in Our Communities, a Kenyan Peace Curriculum,” we learned that after election violence in Kenya, Quakers in Kenya and Iowa collaborated on creating a curriculum to teach peacemaking and problem-solving skills for children and youth. The curriculum was developed to reflect Quaker values and Kenyan life experiences. Next, Noel C. Stahle presented “Miracle Man: H.W. Van der Merwe: the Quaker Who Brought South Africa Enemies Together.” Van der Merwe was a Quaker anti-apartheid activist who played a leading role in building trust and ending apartheid without massive bloodshed. After he began to think of himself as “African,” he built a nation-wide black-white coalition, which peacefully brought about the end of apartheid.
The final presentation, “Integrity and the Academic Bureaucracy” from Richard Miller, called for integrity of faith and practice. Following fifty plus years of teaching, such issues as Football Thursdays, sexual harassment, two syllabi, chair evaluations, and recruiting majors require us to be patterns and examples after the manner of Friends.
MaryKate Morse closed the conference with her plenary session, “What the World Needs Now: A Quaker Higher Education.” MaryKate argued that Quakers are being asked to step in and take risks to be God’s intervention. After presenting the three main crisis that higher education faces today, she talked about how Quakers are uniquely situated to be a healing and transformative force, offering specific points about how the Quaker way might support that work: the power of being Christ-centered, Belovedness (that of God in all), continuous revelation, world engagement, and the core values of simplicity, integrity, and peace. She continued, “Education is not just the accumulation of knowledge; it is an intentionally curated culture.” She finished by encouraging us to think about the classroom not as a bunch of desks facing a podium, but rather as a sanctuary and laboratory where spiritual formation, contextual learning, and authentic community model how to be in the world in a different way.
The evening ended with a reception hosted by the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division of William Penn University.
We depart from this gathering in gratitude for the many voices who united to create such a rich exchange of ideas and meaning. We leave also with awe for the power and fragility of the natural world–a testament to the glory and empathy of our Divine Creator.
19 June 2026—Juneteenth! Honoring African American Quakers in the Anti-Slavery & Suffrage Movements
Happy Juneteenth from the BlackQuaker Project!
A national holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the USA, Juneteenth was signed into law by President Joe Biden on 17 June 2021. This gave federal recognition to a tradition of celebration practiced among African Americans since Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, on 19 June 1865 to inform enslaved African Americans of their freedom, decreed in Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863.
This year our ministry wishes to spotlight the involvement of African American Quakers in the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements. Today we bring to your attention nine trailblazing African American Quaker abolitionists and suffragettes active within the Black liberation struggle during the 18th and 19th centuries. We hope Friends take inspiration from these remarkable life stories as we approach the 2027 Friends World Committee for Consultation’s (FWCC) Global Online Gathering (29 September to 3 October), during which yearly meetings worldwide will reflect on how their local communities have worked to confront historical and contemporary injustice.
AFRICAN AMERICAN QUAKER SEEKER-ACTIVISTS
Benjamin Banneker
(9 November 1731 – 9 October 1806)
Born to a free family of Senegalese descent, Banneker was a largely self-educated mathematician, astronomer, and inventor who was recruited by Friend George Ellicott to survey the boundaries of Washington, D.C. Known for his rigorous almanacs, Banneker used his platform as a prominent African American intellectual to challenge notions of white supremacy by including speeches from leading USA and UK abolitionists in his publications. Most notably, Banneker denounced the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson, penning a searing 1791 letter to the Founding Father–then Secretary of State–which critiqued the contradictions between the equality Jefferson wrote of in the Declaration of Independence and the brutal realities of USA chattel slavery.
Cyrus Bustill
(2 February 1732 – 1806)
Cyrus Bustill, formerly enslaved, became a successful baker, businessman, and community leader in Philadelphia. After gaining his freedom, he used his skills as a baker to build a prosperous business and even baked bread for George Washington’s troops as they crossed the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War. Bustill co-founded the Free African Society, which provided assistance to free African Americans and laid the foundation for later Black institutions. Cyrus Bustill is an ancestor of the towering 20th-century African American pan-Africanist, bass-baritone concert and recording artist, stage and screen actor, all-American athlete, and scholar Paul Robeson.
William Boen
(1735 – 1824)
A farmer born into slavery in New Jersey who later gained his freedom, William Boen was one of the earliest African Americans to de-segregate the Religious Society of Friends. His petitions to join the Society were rejected four times before he was able to become a member of Mount Holly Friends Meeting in 1814.
Paul Cuffe
(17 January 1759 – 7 January 1817)
Born to a formerly enslaved father and a Wampanoag mother, Cuffe grew up to be a successful merchant sea captain, owning several ships. As one of the wealthiest free African Americans in the USA, Cuffe built and funded one of the first racially integrated schools in the United States, guaranteed the construction of the Westport (MA) Friends Meetinghouse, and established trade connections between the USA and Sierra Leone, West Africa. Cuffe was a leader in efforts to organize repatriation for enslaved peoples as an escape from chattel slavery in the USA. A fierce critic of early American democratic institutions, Cuffe served jail time during the Revolutionary War for refusing to pay taxes to a country that deprived him and other African Americans of the right to vote.
Elizabeth
(1766-1866)
Born into slavery, Elizabeth, who refused to marry or take a surname, was a regular attender at Quaker meetings who became an itinerant Methodist Minister active throughout the USA and Canada. She was known for giving sermons condemning chattel slavery, would preach to interracial congregations in Baltimore despite institutional opposition to her presence, and even established a school for Black orphans.
Sojourner Truth
(1797 – 26 November 1883)
A legendary abolitionist and women’s rights movement leader, Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in New York as Isabella Baumfree. Escaping to freedom in 1826, she successfully sued for custody of her son, who had been sold to an Alabama slave owner. Sojourner became known as a fierce public orator who traveled the country giving speeches calling for the liberation of African Americans, women, and most especially Black women, whom she argued were routinely excluded from the women’s rights movement. She notably challenged prominent suffragists of her era to recognize the struggles of African American women in her historic, impromptu speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?,” at the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio.
Grace Mapps Douglass
(1782 – 9 March 1842)
A pioneering abolitionist and women’s rights activist, Grace Bustill Douglass was born to Cyrus Bustill and Elizabeth Morey, a Quaker of English descent whose ancestry can be traced back to Friend Humphey Morey, the first Mayor of Philadelphia. Excluded from the all-male Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, she became a founding member of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, working alongside prominent Black and white activists, such as Lucretia Mott and the Grimké sisters, to lobby the federal government to abolish slavery, organize boycotts, and provide aid to the Underground Railroad. Though a descendant of several generations of Quakers stretching back to the Mayflower, Grace and her daughter—Sarah Mapps Douglass—were forced to sit in segregated seating on the back bench of Arch Street Meeting in Philadelphia. Like her father, Grace was an ancestor of the 20th century renaissance man Paul Robeson.
Sarah Mapps Douglass
(9 September 1806 – 8 September 1882)
Following in the footsteps of her mother, Grace Mapps Douglass, Sarah was a trailblazing abolitionist, writer, educator, and activist. A lifelong teacher, she taught at schools throughout Philadelphia where she could support Black students, later founding a private school for African American girls and co-founding the Female Literary Association (1831), one of the earliest literary and social societies for African American women in the country. Later in life, she studied anatomy and health at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, becoming one of the first African American women known to receive formal training in medicine. All the while, Douglass published influential writings that addressed issues of race, gender, education, and social reform, helping to shape public discussion of these topics. Like her mother, Grace, and her grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, Sarah is a member of the eminent Bustill-Douglass Quaker family whose descendants include Paul Robeson.
Robert Purvis
(1810-1898)
Robert Purvis was a leading African American abolitionist who worked closely with major anti-slavery activists of his time such as William Loyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott. A key figure in the Pennsylvania chapter of the Underground Railroad, Purvis offered his home near Philadelphia as shelter to hundreds of African Americans escaping slavery. Purvis was not only a founding member of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society but chaired Philadelphia’s General Vigilance Committee which provided aid, medical care, and legal defense to freedom seekers while coordinating the activities of the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania. While he worked extensively with Quakers in Philadelphia, Purvis remained only a collaborator and not a member of the Society of Friends, possibly due to a refusal to accept non-violence. Though not a Quaker, his children to Quaker schools, and lived across the street from Byberry Friends Meeting with his wife, Friend Tracey Townsend, who renounced her membership in the Society of Friends shortly after their marriage.
FURTHER READING
We hope these innovative resources will aid those seeking truth and justice, and encourage you to write to us at theblackquakerproject@gmail.com with any reflections, insights, or questions you may have.
Angell, Stephen W. “The Early Period.” Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights, edited by Harold D. Weaver Jr., Paul Kriese, and Stephen W. Angell. Quaker Press of FGC, Philadelphia, 2011, pp. 1–43.
For further information on the F/friends discussed in today’s e-newsletter–with the exception of Cyrus Bustill and Grace Mapps Douglass–please see our 2011 anthology now available as an 2025 audiobook.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. ON JUNETEENTH. New York: Liveright Press, 2021.
Peace and Blessings,
The BlackQuaker Project Wellesley Friends Meeting, New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) www.theblackquakerproject.org 19 June 2026: Juneteenth!
The 2026 FAHE Conference has now concluded. Many thanks to William Penn University for hosting, and thanks to all of the organizers and presenters! We will soon be posting the conference epistle, as well as recordings of some of the sessions. Watch this space!
“[Many] of the men most responsible for institutionalizing the cotton triangle at the heart of America’s slave industries…were all Quakers.”
–David Montero, The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations (2024)
Happy Pride Month from the BlackQuaker Project (BQP)!
As Juneteenth–celebrated nationally on 19 June–approaches, our ministry wishes to spotlight breakthrough scholarship on the central financial role of Quakers in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. We will share excerpts from the sobering book that brought these revelations to our attention, re-affirm the importance of Retrospective Justice in addressing past injustice, offer queries for reflection, and share important news from the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC).
The BlackQuaker Project is thoroughly disappointed to learn of the deep, central, and lucrative involvement of northern Quakers–merchants and bankers especially–in the institution and industry of chattel slavery in the Americas. These uncomfortable truths can be found in David Montero’s The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations, which uncovers the extent to which economic elites in the North participated in—and profited from—the enslavement of African people.
For nearly 400 years, cash crops and precious metals (such as iron, gold, and silver) produced by enslaved Africans in the Americas flowed into European factories, where they were processed into textiles, rum, and firearms that were shipped to Africa and exchanged for kidnapped Africans, who were then trafficked through the Middle Passage to the Americas, where a lifetime of brutal labor awaited them. This vicious cycle, known as the triangular trade, would not have been possible without North American merchants, who brought ruthless speed and efficiency to the logistics of the slave trade, and bankers, who funded both the trade and Southern plantations–all from which they amassed enormous, generational wealth. Montero reveals an extensive web of aristocratic Northern families who intermarried and profited from slavery even more than their Southern counterparts. Most notable for our ministry is the revelation that Quaker businessmen and Quaker businesses exploited people of African descent mercilessly and hypocritically, playing an integral role in establishing and financing these dehumanizing institutions for generations while, in some cases, claiming to be abolitionists. Today we share select excerpts from this publication, personally chosen for our readership by author David Montero, whose book is now available to purchase from Hatchett Books and Amazon.
Excerpts from The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations (2024)
Selected by author David Montero:
QUAKER INVOLVEMENT IN SLAVERY: COTTON SHIPPING, THE BLACK BALL LINE, AND CITIBANK
[Many] of the men most responsible for institutionalizing the cotton triangle at the heart of America’s slave industries—Francis Thompson, Isaac Wright, and Jeremiah Thompson—were all Quakers. In Capitalism and Slavery [1944], Eric Williams observed that “slave dealing was one of the most lucrative investments of English as well as American Quakers, and the name of a slaver [ship], The Willing Quaker,…symbolizes the approval with which the slave trade was regarded in Quaker circles.”
Between 1818 and 1828, Jeremiah Thompson, a Quaker, sold and shipped so much cotton abroad that he was considered the foremost cotton exporter in the United States—referred to by some as the country’s first “cotton king”—as well as the nation’s largest shipowner.
In 1818, [Benjamin] Marshall, together with Francis Thompson, his nephew Jeremiah Thompson, and Isaac Wright, launched a new line of commercial ocean liners. They explained in a letter to one of Liverpool’s leading cotton houses: “These ships shall leave New York, full or not full, on the 5th, and Liverpool on the 1st, of every Month throughout the year.” Regular service, dependable timing, shipping that ran like a machine, something never done before. It constituted nothing less than a revolution in transportation and the business of slavery.
The first of their ships to set sail for Liverpool was called the James Monroe, and its hull was filled mostly with apples, and only seventy-one bales of cotton. But, as advertised, despite the paucity of its cargo, it sailed, nonetheless. Its flag was a red blazon with a black ball at its center. As a result, the first of the regularized transatlantic ocean liners became known as the Black Ball Line. Three other ships followed the James Monroe, each about one hundred feet long and four hundred tons in carrying capacity. All lost money in the beginning, being too capacious, and too empty. But Black Ball’s owners had the capital to wait it out. Success did come, roughly by 1820, and it changed shipping, enslavement, and New York forever. “From the sailing of this packet,” wrote Grant Thorburn in 1845, “we may date the day from whence the commerce of New-York began to increase seven-fold.”
The Black Ball ships were soon loaded up, as the idea of regular cotton shipments caught on, spawning an industry of competitors and imitators—the Red Star Line in 1821, the Blue Swallowtail in 1822, among others—that opened numerous additional lines across the Atlantic, and down the coasts to southern plantations as well. All sides of the cotton triangle began to flow regularly and exponentially.
A “commercial marine” emerged, as the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond later called it, “which whitens every sea, and carries the products of American industry into all ports open to her flag.”
So began an ever more concentrated flow of cotton passing through New York, and for this reason, by 1820 New York surpassed Philadelphia and Boston as a center of trade. South Street and its docks sat at the center of the world’s most important economic triangle, the greatest wealth engine the world had ever seen.
The emerging institutional link between cotton, slavery, and Wall Street in this period was nowhere more poignantly reflected than in the relationship between City Bank and the personage of Isaac Wright. Wright had long been a prosperous cotton shipper. In 1825, as his fortunes rose even higher through Black Ball, he was elected a City Bank director. Thus, the bank profited considerably from its close relationship with the revolution he, Marshall, and Thompson had unleashed. Meanwhile, Wright and his business, Isaac Wright & Co., prospered from the bank’s services and pool of credit. In fact, so important was Wright and his slavery-dependent business that he was elected president of City Bank in 1827, serving in that position for five years.
The central role City Bank played in underwriting Wright’s shipping line is one the bank itself has proudly, though deceptively, emphasized for decades. The “Heritage” section of Citi’s website underscores the bank’s ties to Quakers and the Black Ball, while whitewashing the connection to enslavement. “Many of the bank’s early leaders were significant figures in the New York merchant economy,” it reads. “Quaker merchant Isaac Wright, a one-time board director and bank president, was a leading importer of British textiles. He founded the Black Ball Line, which was believed to be the first regular packet line service between New York and Liverpool. Benjamin Marshall, his partner in the shipping line, joined the board as well.”
The bank was careful then, as it has been ever since, to avoid highlighting that, in doing so, it helped launch a revolution in the commerce of slavery, a milestone that directly facilitated the exploitation of Black people to expand exponentially.
[Selected and excerpted from pages 37 and 247]
About the Author
David Montero is an award-winning journalist, author, and producer whose writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Nation, The Harvard Business Review, and Le Monde Diplomatique. He has been twice nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on PBS’s flagship investigative series, FRONTLINE. Currently, Montero serves as Artist-in-Residence at the Slavery North Initiative, an academic and cultural research center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, dedicated to investigating the under-researched history of slavery in the northern USA and Canada. His books include Kickback: Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network (2018) and The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations (2024).
Food for Thought and Action
The BlackQuaker Project (BQP) continues to propose that Quakers adopt a model of Retrospective Justice to address our historical involvement in these crimes against humanity. To learn more, we encourage Friends to read our 2020 Pendle Hill pamphlet, Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives, or listen to as a 2026 audiobook.
How do you feel about the ways in which 18th-century Quakers, as merchants and bankers, played leadership roles in–and profited from–slavery and the triangular trade?
Are there stories of Quaker involvement in slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade that you wish to bring to the attention of our ministry?
How are Monthly and Yearly Meetings–as well as Quaker organizations and foundations–responding to Friends’ historical involvement in slavery and the slave trade?
How can we, as individual Quakers, respond to these past injustices in accordance with our model of Retrospective Justice?
What has happened to the generational wealth Quakers gained from chattel slavery and the triangular trade? Who has inherited these profits in the present? What do these inheritors owe society?
Postscript: Important New Information from FWCC for Yearly Meetings Worldwide
The FWCC World Office has just released 3 queries that Yearly meetings are requested to answer during the 2027 Global Online Conference, “Sowing Seeds of Justice,”
26 September-4 October 2027. We invite Friends to consider these official queries, listed below, and how you might contribute to your Yearly Meeting’s response.
What acts of injustice, prejudice, and discrimination occurring in your communities could your Yearly Meeting be aware of and take action on?
What learnings from our Quaker history are there that may be applicable to helping address current injustices and inequities?
How are you sowing seeds of justice, reconciliation, and hope?
The Friends Historical Association is pleased to announce that its grants application cycle is officially open for 2026-2027. Funds are available in support of research, projects, and publication subventions in the field of Quaker History. The deadline for each application is June 19, 2026, with funds expected to be distributed in August and September 2026. More information about guidelines and the application process can be found on the “Grants” page of the Friends Historical Association website: https://www.quakerhistory.org/grants.
Comments Off on Friends Historical Association Grants
Dear F/friends, In recognition of Quaker-descendent Paul Robeson’s 128th birthday, the BlackQuakerProject offers a personal statement from Friend Harold D. Weaver Jr., reflecting on the extraordinary achievements, humanism, and self-sacrifice that defined Robeson’s life as well as the razing of his career during the cultural stranglehold of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. We further wish to share an accounting of Professor Weaver’s decades-long efforts to restore Robeson to his rightful place in world history and a directory you can use to explore the many fruits of this advocacy.
A personal statement from Dr. Harold D. Weaver Jr.
Dr. Weaver Lectures on Robeson at the Nordic Arts School, Kokkola, Finland, 2008.
Paul Robeson lived during the same period—1898-1976—as did my father, college professor Dr. Harold D. Weaver Sr. This was a time in USA history when African-descendant folks suffered as we imagine hell to be. Besides my family, I have no greater respect for any American who ever lived than this renaissance man, who never bowed to injustice even “one-thousandth part of an inch.”
Robeson was directly descended from over 250 years of Quakers in England and the British colony in North America. This included the first mayor of Philadelphia, European-American Humphrey Moray, during the rule of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania (1681 charter from England’s King Charles II). This also included prominent ancestors of African descent: celebrated educators Grace Bustill Douglass (c. 1782-1842) and her daughter, Sarah Mapps Douglass (1806-1882), who were both relegated to the back bench of their Arch Street Friends meetinghouse in Philadelphia despite their commitment and contributions to Quakerism and to the improvement of health and women’s rights.
Growing up in Princeton, New Jersey, Robeson was the son of previously enslaved Rev. William Drew Robeson, the minister of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton. The crucial advice of his father—(1) to attain the highest possible, (2) to pursue only worthwhile goals, and (3) to remain loyal to his convictions—would influence Robeson to achieve near perfection in almost everything he set out to do, as well as the moral commitment to follow his beliefs without compromise. Unfortunately, his Quaker mother, Maria Louisa Bustill Robeson, a school teacher, died in a house fire before young Paul entered primary school. Sadly, he had no memory of her. We can only imagine the impact of her genes and 250 years of direct Quaker ancestry on this incredible overachiever in so many areas of life.
At Rutgers University, Robeson had a legendary academic and non-academic career, graduating in 1919 as a 2-year Phi Beta Kappa member, class valedictorian, four-letter athlete, 2-year All-American football star, and winner of every university oratorical contest for which he was eligible. Though he was a member of the Rutgers Glee Club, his African heritage prevented his participation in off-campus concerts. His collegiate achievements served as a preamble to the future world-renowned artist of screen, stage, music, and recordings. He starred in twelve films, performed in concert halls across the globe, and touched the hearts of people around the world with his recordings. Especially notable were his pioneering stage performance of Othello and his recordings singing “Ol’ ManRiver,” the lyrics of which he changed significantly as his politics—and the world’s politics—changed.
A revolutionary humanist and influential Pan-Africanist, Robeson was committed to Black liberation and dignity worldwide. At great personal cost, he connected the liberation struggle of Africans, African Americans, and the people of the Caribbean in condemning Western imperialism. Trinidadian scholar-activist-playwright C.L.R. James, Chilean poet-diplomat Pablo Neruda, and anti-colonial Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere were among those respected international figures who called him a friend and praised his artistic commitment to justice and freedom around the world. He was also a confidant of USSR political leader Nikita Khrushchev. The USA government, economic institutions, cultural czars, and media united to take away his livelihood, to seize his passport for eight years (1950-1958), to institute an industry boycott of his records, and to bar him from concert halls. Is that not totalitarianism, exemplifying the unity and collaboration of the political, economic, and cultural? Robeson was never even allowed to appear on television—a total “white-out.”
Pioneering Advocacy Activities of Prof. Weaver on Behalf of Paul Robeson, Rutgers University, 1970-74: Honorary Doctorate, Course, Film Festival-Symposium, Film, and Publications.
Professor Weaver Presenting His Paul Robeson Film at Rutgers University, 1972
When Weaver arrived at Rutgers from the Université de Paris VIII-Vincennes/St. Denis in September 1970 to head and create a new program in Afro-American and African Studies, he found that not a single student in the first class of the introductory course had ever heard of Paul Robeson even though most were African Americans from New Jersey. He felt a mission to correct that. Over the next three and a half years, he worked to return Robeson to his rightful place in Rutgers, USA, and world history. In May 1971, Pete Seeger, Ossie Davis, Paul Robeson Jr., and Weaver broke the nationwide TV silence on Robeson, appearing as panelists in the Emmy-award-winning, 3-part PBS (then National Education Television) series, New Jersey Speaks: A Tribute to Paul Robeson. The following year, he taught the first course in the world on Robeson, Black Biography and the Times: Paul Robeson, for which he produced and narrated the educational short film, “Paul Robeson: Identity, Political Economy, and Communications,” which also became the synthesizing, closing theme of the new introductory course, assuring that all students studying Africana Studies at Rutgers College were exposed to Mr. Robeson. In April 1973, to celebrate Robeson’s 75th birthday, Weaver organized the first USA Paul Robeson Symposium and Film Festival, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, Johnson and Johnson International, and the university. This week-long celebration began with a keynote address from the great Trinidadian scholar, playwright, and political activist, C.L.R. James, and presentations by other major Robeson scholars and activists. This advocacy culminated in Weaver’s initiation of the action that led to the university’s awarding Robeson an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in April 1973. Later that fall, he organized a panel on Robeson for the annual conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in New York, during which he also screened two films in a Robeson mini-film festival. In December 1973/January 1974, Weaver published two articles on his role model–”Paul Robeson and Film: Racism and Anti-Racism in Communications” in The Negro History Bulletin and “Paul Robeson: Beleaguered Leader” in The Black Scholar (reprinted with some changes in Jacobin magazine in June 2021).
Conclusion
In the decades since his resignation from Rutgers in February 1974, Dr. Weaver has continued to organize film festivals and symposia screening Robeson’s work and to lecture on Robeson at universities and other non-formal educational institutions in China, Mexico, Finland, Taiwan, Canada, and the USA, including Beijing University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Universite’ Laval, University of Toronto, Harvard University, Virginia Union University, Princeton University, Talladega College, Yale University, Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC) (Cuernavaca, Mexico), and the Nordic Arts Institute (Kokkola, Finland).
A Partial List of Resources by and from Harold D. Weaver Jr.
The 2022 and 2023 Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum:
“Paul Robeson & His 200 Years of USA Quaker Ancestors” featuring Joyce Mosley, Mark Solomon, and Harold D. Weaver Jr. (hosted over Zoom and in-person at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts).
